Biden / Harris Focused Discussion

[Edge-]

Ahhh, there it is, We gotta stay there for fucking ever, we gotta bomb every square inch and terrorize everyone, now uhhhh for the Kurds!

Again Theo, I'll kindly thank you to stop strawmaning my arguments and creating fictional version in your head.

Our troops are there now. We need to protect them while they're there. Get them the fuck out ASAP, but I don't think you'd want to have a friend/family member functional abandoned in the middle of Iraq and left open to attacks without fear of reprisal from the attackers, no? Or maybe you do, I don't want to speak for you like you seem to like speaking for me.

And as a reminder: I've been protesting the wars since 2002, so miss me with this absolute horse shit.

That is what is great about your stances, they are never serious or committed. You oppose these wars, Someday, Kinda like you are for Universal Health Care, Someday.... that is a pretty low stakes position to take on the matter.

I oppose wars, and I'm all for an orderly and safe withdrawal that protects US personnel while not leaving the region in a total shambles because we've worked with the local authorities.

I'm for M4A and I wish there was the national will to do it NOW, but as we've extensively discussed, there ain't. There's huge support for M4A in the abstract, but every time details have started to roll out about what it would entail you see that support start dwindling pretty quickly.

I was working with a group pushing for M4A in CA for a while, but it was a bit of a clown show so I kinda stopped. My Rep. is on the M4A caucus as well, and I was glad to vote for him and have him continue doing what he can to push for it.

You just seem mad you don't get everything you want now, but unfortunately reality is kinda a complicated thing and nothing is ever as black and white as we wish it to be.

[Felya]

Why didn't your guy raise the minimum wage, or send those $2k checks?

I voted for those who raised the Seattle minimum wage to 16.69 (giggady)... people that don’t vote, can never say that...

[Underverse]

Because people are sick of America World Police and this is an international forum. This case being justified or not is irrelevant...

If nothing else... if a democrat in office brings attention back to US military strikes, that’s a good thing. Just don’t ‘boy who cried wolf’ this thing...

This doesn't really have anything to do with America being 'world police'. It's America pursuing their national interests abroad. And it matters whether or not it's justified, because people shouldn't be complaining if it is.

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The US loses a lot more prestige by engaging in these kinds of military maneuvers then by focusing on economic issues and nation building abilities.

In Iraq and Afghanistan and Yemen and Libya and Syria, we have proved over and over and over ad nausam that we are willing to go the extra mile in bombing and killing and destroying other whole countries. At least other smallish countries. The result of all of this is that we are hated worldwide, and a large number of people throughout the world view the US as the number 1 threat to peace in the world.

All of our military actions in the Middle East has basically given the US a black eye - well lots of them. It has also cost the US a HUGE amount of money. That 10 trillion or so dollars we have spent on our military since the year 2000 would have bought very good health care and a very modern up to date and really cool transportation / mass transit system throughout the whole country. Which incidentally would have helped considerably vs the virus and generated a LOT of wealth for a LOT of Americans.

Your approach to the world is being acted upon by the US, and the main result overall is that EU can China are emerging as the main global powers, with the US third and other countries further down the list. If your approach continues to be applied by the US, then we will fall further than third.

Yeah this is a massive oversimplification. US military interests generally haven't resulted in a loss of geopolitical power (Vietnam is the main exception). Our moronic ex-president's policy of 'America First' and the subsequent rejection of bilaterialism is what has basically given the future of the world to China (and to a lesser extent the EU). If anything, the US navy has been the single most powerful force on earth for securing and maintaining the bilateral economic and diplomatic pacts that have led to the ascension of the west. And that isn't even considering the rebuilding of basically all of Europe and Japan post WWII.

Nation building was attempted in the middle east too (and continues to this day), but has been hampered by what boils down to significant cultural differences plus more powerful competing interests. It's hard to quantify how much money the US spent versus gained in pursuing these policies, but it's not as simple as looking at the military budget and assuming that the entire pile of cash can just be moved to healthcare while everything else remains the same. That money is being put to work, and that's why America is still making the rules (for now) instead of China.

[Felya]

This doesn't really have anything to do with America being 'world police'. It's America pursuing their national interests abroad. And it matters whether or not it's justified, because people shouldn't be complaining if it is.

My dude... read replies to the thread... I disagree with both assertions.

[Underverse]

Lets just forgot how often innocent men and woman die.

And yes, the US won't ignore it, does not mean they are any better than the countries(Russia, Iran, China) they pretend to oppose.

The US is better than China by default because they don't enforce an internal policy of ethno-nationalism and an American version of Sinicization. Those policies automatically place the rest of the world as second class citizens. The US has longstanding struggles with racism, but even those are laughable compared to Chinese state-driven assimilation.

As for Russia, I don't think there's a single category where Russia - as a state - can claim a moral high ground. It's a corrupt, anti-democratic kleptocracy that puts accusations of 'voter fraud' and 'bribery' in the US to shame.

Iran: theocratic kleptocracy where homosexuals are systematically exterminated (Khomeini's own words) and the word of the Qur'an is higher than law? No thanks.

The US is better than all three of these countries in many ways. The loss of civilian life is always tragic and is/should be avoided whenever possible; but military action should not be prohibited at the slightest whiff of risk of civilian casualties.

[Theodarzna]

Again Theo, I'll kindly thank you to stop strawmaning my arguments and creating fictional version in your head.

Oh but ofcourse, I forgot, that is a privilege reserved only for someone such as yourself,

We can argue about how Trump ignored the Iraqi vote to kick them out for years, something which you don't seem to care much about, and how Biden should work with congress to wind down our presence there quickly.

I mean your opening reply really implied a lot about me and my position, making me strongly suspect your earlier claims about you believing my sincerity to be completely bogus. For someone who likes claim to be strawmanned you have no trouble doing so to others at your earliest convenience, you know when you aren't insulting people you are talking to.

Apologies, I won't offend thine sensibilities nor step out of place again.

[Cthulhu 2020]

I wasn't aware the US had some right to overlordship on a continent the United States isn't even physically on? And bombing and slaughtering people and building a world spanning Empire seems, you know, evil.

I mean if we just acknowledge that is what is being done, I can at least respect the honesty of it, but pretending "Our shenanigans are cheeky and fun, their shenanigans are cruel!" is just ridiculous.

As an immigrant, you've indeed chosen to live in the US when you have the option of living elsewhere. Also, I wonder about this.

The issue of drone striking violent extremists in countries is more nuanced than "LOL THEY'RE ACTUALLY KILLING INNOCENTS". It's also a lot more nuanced than the US just declaring itself the world police. But you question the US's ability to act in ways that dramatically affect people's lives. You're solidly against the US killing people as a sort of moral principle.

And yet the US also has the chance to improve the lives of millions who immigrate here. Improving people's lives seems to be something that is universally good when that lone figure is considered in a vacuum. Many seem to believe (falsely) that immigrants have negatively affected the wages and overall amount of jobs in the US. While this is false, many have been convinced it is true. People going back and forth between US and Mexico has been a thing ever since the US and Mexico shared a border. No... even before that there were people who would migrate north for the summer and fall, and south for winter and spring. It only really seemed to start becoming a political issue in the 80's when Republicans needed a scapegoat to blame the vanishing jobs caused by automation, outsourcing, and just in general the US economy moving away from manufacturing. Immigrants often work their way up the ladder when they have a simple path to citizenship. Likewise the children of immigrants also tend to work their way up into better stations in life. People who immigrated before the 80's had an easy time.

Now, here's the thing, you say that the US is supplementing its unskilled work force with wage slave immigrants. But there's only one thing that's keeping these people wage slaves: the fact that immigration has been made almost impossibly hard to accomplish in the last few decades. Before, it was rather easy for them to gain citizenship and move up the totem pole if they so wished to become US citizens. Now that Republicans and other useful idiots have made immigration a hot button issue, thus bogging down the system to a near crawl (and that's being generous) immigrants who come to the US now face years waiting for their application to be approved. This limbo that migrants exist in is what causes them to be wage slaves. The very fact that they are here "illegally" (a term I don't like to use, but is the most succinct) is what allows many employers to be able to pay them well below the minimum wage and get away with it. These people are being exploited for their cheap labor easily precisely because Republicans and others who are against immigration have put migrants into a situation where they cannot complain about their working conditions, and they cannot work their way up to better wages.

So I have to ask, why are you so strongly against immigrants searching for a better life here in the US? What did those California latinos do that hurt you so much? The very thing you are against - migrants being used as wage slaves - was caused by a system of beliefs where people are strongly against immigrants having a path to citizenship. If migrants had a path to citizenship that wasn't a massive pain (and often takes close to 10 years to get their application heard) then they would be working their way up the pole, or at the very least being paid the minimum wage. As it stands, enough people have bought into the lie that migrants are detrimental to our jobs and our economy, and in believing this lie, they feed into the system that exploits these migrants as wage slaves.

I'm not going to wholly support nor condemn drone strikes, as most of them thus far to my knowledge have only included enemy combatants. I don't really buy into the conspiracy being pushed that "there were really civilians, they just don't want to tell you about it!" When civilians are killed it has been reported in the past. In addition, as stated, I'm not really going to buy into the criticisms of people who either supported Trump or refused to criticize him, especially on matters where Trump committed far worse atrocities openly.

[Omega10]

Yeah this is a massive oversimplification. US military interests generally haven't resulted in a loss of geopolitical power (Vietnam is the main exception). Our moronic ex-president's policy of 'America First' and the subsequent rejection of bilaterialism is what has basically given the future of the world to China (and to a lesser extent the EU). If anything, the US navy has been the single most powerful force on earth for securing and maintaining the bilateral economic and diplomatic pacts that have led to the ascension of the west. And that isn't even considering the rebuilding of basically all of Europe and Japan post WWII.

Nation building was attempted in the middle east too (and continues to this day), but has been hampered by what boils down to significant cultural differences plus more powerful competing interests. It's hard to quantify how much money the US spent versus gained in pursuing these policies, but it's not as simple as looking at the military budget and assuming that the entire pile of cash can just be moved to healthcare while everything else remains the same. That money is being put to work, and that's why America is still making the rules (for now) instead of China.

There are reasons why the US is viewed with such disdain throughout the world. It's not our freedoms. It's our arrogance and our tendency to shoot first and never ask questions. Our military actions HAVE caused countries throughout the world to oppose us.

And our attempts at nation building in the Middle East were closer to giving piles of cash to politicians that were pro-US. We built very few, if any, power plants or water treatment plants or anything like that to replace the ones we or our allies destroyed.

The rebuilding of basically all of Europe and Japan post WWII was over 50 years ago. Your statement would be almost all true if it were written in 1950 or 1960. We've done a great job of milking that rebuilding for every ounce of political influence we could get. But that well is pretty much depleted.

Moving forward, trade and economic issues decide who is powerful and who is not. The fact that our very expensive military did not just roll over Afghanistan, and that Iraq, Yemen, Libya, and Syria are not American puppets, shows the world dramatically how irrelevant military power is other than basic defense resources. The fact that all of them are basically destroyed countries reflects very badly on us as well.

The good news for you is that the US will continue trying to get as much power as it can through military brute force methods. The bad news is that this will just isolate the US more and more from the rest of the world, to the benefit of China and EU.

[Theodarzna]

As an immigrant, you've indeed chosen to live in the US when you have the option of living elsewhere. Also, I wonder about this.

I see, Well the circumstances of my presence here are their own story. However, Is the physical land and population of a country the same as the State that rules it? I wonder if I misjudged the Palestinians killing Israeli children? I mean by the logic of this "YOU LIVE HERE! YOU MUST LOVE OUR EMPIRE AND ITS ACTIVITIES! HOW DARE YOU NOT CELEBRATE OUR CIA AND MILITARY OCCUPATION! FUCKING FOREIGNER", which is doubly ironic because you talk out of two sides of your mouth. Buried in your logic is rather ironic xenophobia whilst I guess trying to pin me as xenophobic. As I've said, Scratch a Democrat and you find Ronald Reagan lurking beneath. Appeal to some Bush era logic that amounts to "SUPPORT OUR TROOPS!" squawking when people criticized the Iraq war. Let me guess you backed that one too?

And yet the US also has the chance to improve the lives of millions who immigrate here.

How so? Actually scratch that its a silly question. You mean materially. Great, The US shall grant all the many Billion humans this standard of living! Oh right, that would exhaust 15 or more planet Earths of resources. Good luck fighting Climate Change if you have to give nine billion people a McMansion and all the consumer goods that lifestyle entails. Maybe you like many Liberals only selectively believe in the concept, you believe in it when it suites you. Heck, America cannot even furnish 300 Million with that lifestyle. Let alone a Billion to nine billion more.

Of-course you could say offer them a worse standard of living but then why would they come to live in a box and eat bugs? Tough questions. So are we really improving THEIR lives or simply yours? Is it simply the desire for cheaper maids and to maintain the price of rent and home purchases?

Many seem to believe (falsely) that immigrants have negatively affected the wages and overall amount of jobs in the US. While this is false, many have been convinced it is true.

AH! An econ professor? Have you discovered the alchemy the defies supply and demand? You must have to have made such a bold statement! I sure hope this is more than "Ummmm I read a very persuasive Center for America Progress memo!"

No... even before that there were people who would migrate north for the summer and fall, and south for winter and spring. It only really seemed to start becoming a political issue in the 80's when Republicans needed a scapegoat to blame the vanishing jobs caused by automation, outsourcing, and just in general the US economy moving away from manufacturing. Immigrants often work their way up the ladder when they have a simple path to citizenship. Likewise the children of immigrants also tend to work their way up into better stations in life. People who immigrated before the 80's had an easy time.

Gosh, who signed NAFTA I wonder? Anyway....! Gosh what current president fought for it in the Senate, and fought for the Bankruptcy bill? And the crime bill? Mysteries that will surely evade our eyes.

Now, here's the thing, you say that the US is supplementing its unskilled work force with wage slave immigrants.

I am curious why this reply comes after a Foreign Policy post, so I am wondering if you get to THAT thing?

And I don't say that, because I don't refer to people as "Unskilled", and yes, the US business community simply doesn't want to pay people. Simple as that. Or do you think Tyson Chicken Farms really CARE about, people at all? You must be pretty hard up on that Liberalism to believe HR spin about a "Company that cares" or whatever else it says.

But there's only one thing that's keeping these people wage slaves: the fact that immigration has been made almost impossibly hard to accomplish in the last few decades.

Which returns to the initial question, Is this a long winded open borders debate where you poorly articulate why its such a noble charitable thing when people seek cheaper maids and higher rent rates and crushing their own poor to do it? "A better life?" I wonder for whom is primarily the beneficiary.

Before, it was rather easy for them to gain citizenship and move up the totem pole if they so wished to become US citizens.

Before the 1960's there were explicit quotas for who could come and from were? Or did that not get covered in recent History classes?

Now that Republicans and other useful idiots have made immigration a hot button issue, thus bogging down the system to a near crawl (and that's being generous) immigrants who come to the US now face years waiting for their application to be approved. This limbo that migrants exist in is what causes them to be wage slaves.

As the business community designed. You still have this problem that your worldview depends on some magic alchemy where the law of supply and demand doesn't apply to labor, which is pretty bonkers. Or to Rent rates.

So, you are telling me that if you double the number of people looking for a place to live the rent will never go up? Strange.... OH! Let me guess you are a YIMBY who looked at Central Park and said "Gosh that could be more residential units!" and assumes you could practically spread a billion or more people across the United States? I guess Climate Science or the idea of "Where jobs are" isn't covered in school either. AH! Maybe the heroic, noble, radiant and resplendent Democrats, that noble, Godly, Divine sent party will surely build housing, I mean sure they can't stomach sending ONE two thousand dollar check, OR giving the population Health Care but they will totally fork over the trillions to build endless housing projects even if it hurts Blackrock whom financed their campaigns.

And Labor, lets say you triple the number of people scrambling for jobs, HELL! Make 'em all legal. Make every soul on Earth an American citizen, right now! We already seem incapable of reaching full employment, with open borders what would that do exactly? What happens to a job when there is one opening and 100 applicants? I wonder if those applicants can afford to make many demands? Do you believe the Koch Brothers and every Billionaire under the sun backing this Open Borders schlop has a soul? Have their hearts set to aid and uplift the masses, why the Koch's just really want to help right? What other fairy tale stories can you spin to me?

So I have to ask, why are you so strongly against immigrants searching for a better life here in the US?

Because I'm aware of how rotten this is. First peoples utterly contemptible selfish motives. In the end the only beneficiary is you, you aren't sacrificing for others and if you were you'd sell off your wealth and simply give it to them in the land they live in and know and, *Gasp* maybe even love. This whole screed, if summarized, is akin to a boss acting like he did someone a favor paying them 10 bucks an hour to whipe their ass. If you were this caring generous soul who just wants to help you certainly wouldn't be asking for them to work in return. It's like seeing a gaggle of orphans and offering them a job, obviously at a rate that maintains your profit and is a good deal for yourself. Then acting like you are some saint when you are simply using them to turn a profit. The true motives can't be hidden.

No, you only want them here to enrich yourself, its pure exploitation with fresh make up so you feel good about it. But that is it, its pure profit and self interest disguised like you are doing someone a favor. When if you were this benevolent Knight in Shining Armor you'd simply hand over your riches. But its not about lifting someone's lot, you know that. This is Capitalism, vicious, savage and ugly Capitalism. That is the thing, this role-play like a "Decent Human Being" while trying to sound so noble defending *Checks Notes* a corporations apparent right to a favorable labor market and American elite having relatively cheap nanny's and servants and cheap labor in general. Again, are you dull enough to believe the Koch's and the *Checks Notes* Libertarian Party are here to help?

Second, you obviously don't plan to furnish them with that "American Dream" lifestyle, hell America cannot even furnish everyone who is already here with it? So lets not lie and claim you are uplifting anyone. You are simply exploiting them, exploiting the whole world to make a few oligarchs fat and rich.

Third, and this is the wider point. Who shall I trust? I mean it seems your entire position is contingent on ....
A) Supply and Demand doesn't apply to Housing or Wages..... somehow.
B) That America, or this Planet actually can afford to furnish or make it even possible for everyone to attain some "American Dream" standard of living.
C) That all the legions of Billionaires and the AnCaps and Libertarians are totally shoulder to shoulder to "Do the right thing", no malicious or evil intent to see here.
D) The Democrats, (Radiant and Noble, Peace and Blessings be Upon Them) are entirely pure in motivation and spirit.
E) That every bad thing in the country, all the sins are the GOP's fault!
F) That if you live here you have to support the CIA and the Pentagon!

That last one of-course coming from a rather weird notion that love for a country is synonymous with Love for a State or Government. I love lots of places, and people. Pentagon? CIA? Political Parties? Yeah I don't care about any of that. I'd happily set the constitution on fire tomorrow. It's just paper and a bad knock off of what Britain already had. My love for America, or really more accurate California is akin to ones love for a mountain, or a forest, or a particular field of grass or a lake or a creek. Or like my love for certain people. It's pre-political, it's non-political. Which I'll grant, might be conceptually hard for you to grasp. Basically I don't love some ideal, or proposition, America is a place with people in it. Not some conception devoid of relationships to other people.

But thank you for the moral preening, it was a roaring good show and a fine display, you are sure to get many pats on the back for this gem.

[Elegiac]

I mean it seems

I.e. continuing to ignore what is actually being said in favor of a tirade against strawman positions you've assigned to people with the justification that "everyone does it to me so it's okay, I'm a victim ". The common theme here is that you can't provide evidence anyone is actually making these claims, hence the constant claims that you don't trust what people say, only you know what they really mean, etc.

Being triggered because people point out the inconsistency (or rather, the disturbing implications) in being anti-immigration while being pro-natalist doesn't mean they're 'morally preening', rofl. It means your position isn't defensible and to compensate for that you have to fearmonger about fictional bad outcomes that you saw in a movie - hence "live in a box and eat bugs" - while ignoring actual bad outcomes that aren't don't service the neat and tidy explanation of how coastal liberal elites ruined everything for everyone with a horde of cheap Mexican labor or w/e, hence:

Before the 1960's there were explicit quotas for who could come and from were? Or did that not get covered in recent History classes?

Making shitty dishonest arguments like this when you know perfectly well there's about a twenty year period between deregulation of immigration in the 1960s and the reintroduction of hard border control under the Reagan administration in the 1980s.

[Dontrike]

Biden has only been in about a month, give him time. He will drone it up just like Obama.

And like Trump, but we'll see how you dodge that fact. Introspection must be like a slur in your household.

[JohnBrown1917]

The US is better than China by default because they don't enforce an internal policy of ethno-nationalism and an American version of Sinicization. Those policies automatically place the rest of the world as second class citizens. The US has longstanding struggles with racism, but even those are laughable compared to Chinese state-driven assimilation.

Atleast China fucks up a lot less countries abroad.

So yeah, the US is not any better in my eyes. You think ill just forget about the millions of Iraqi lives ruined by the US?

As for Russia, I don't think there's a single category where Russia - as a state - can claim a moral high ground. It's a corrupt, anti-democratic kleptocracy that puts accusations of 'voter fraud' and 'bribery' in the US to shame.

And still somehow does not have a foreign policy as terrible as the one the US has.

Iran: theocratic kleptocracy where homosexuals are systematically exterminated (Khomeini's own words) and the word of the Qur'an is higher than law? No thanks.

And has the least amount of power on a word-scale of the countries I mentioned.

The US is better than all three of these countries in many ways. The loss of civilian life is always tragic and is/should be avoided whenever possible; but military action should not be prohibited at the slightest whiff of risk of civilian casualties.

It should be if its purely for gains of power or wealth, which is what the US is doing.
No country on earth even comes close to lives destroyed by US foreign policy all while pretending it for "muh freedoms".



The fall of the US empire should become a holiday if it ever happens.

[Dontrike]

And still somehow does not have a foreign policy as terrible as the one the US has.

The country that just invaded another country has a better foreign policy? Wanna try that again?

[JohnBrown1917]

The country that just invaded another country has a better foreign policy? Wanna try that again?

The US just bombed Syria again, so what are you even talking about? The US has a far, far bigger military budget. And we all know what they get used for.

Want to talk about the support for Saudies bullshit in Yemen? Isreal with Gaza? The attacks in Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria? The hostility against Iran?

[Dontrike]

The US just bombed Syria again, so what are you even talking about?

I wasn't talking about the bombing, I was talking about the "foreign policy" nonsense you spouted, but since you like to move goalposts so much let's stick to this one before you do it again. Who was bombed exactly?

[Felya]

The US just bombed Syria again, so what are you even talking about? The US has a far, far bigger military budget. And we all know what they get used for.

With their smaller budget, they took land from another country and are bombing Chechnya and Georgia. The former states that escaped USSR, are in fear that they will be the next Ukraine, Georgia or Chechnya.

Want to talk about the support for Saudies bullshit in Yemen? Isreal with Gaza? The attacks in Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria? The hostility against Iran?

Uhm... excluding their support for Iran in selling weapons... Which of those Russia has not done? Seriously? Let’s talk about it tankie... let’s talk about you not giving a shit about bombing or foreign policy, but just shitting on US?

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I wasn't talking about the bombing, I was talking about the "foreign policy" nonsense you spouted, but since you like to move goalposts so much let's stick to this one before you do it again. Who was bombed exactly?

Everything he fucking listed Russia did worse... “attacks on Afghanistan”... jeebus... yeah... Russia never attacked Afghanistan... :/

[Darkeon]

And like Trump, but we'll see how you dodge that fact. Introspection must be like a slur in your household.

I wonder if Edge will be as upset about Whataboutisms as he was during the last years.

[Felya]

I wonder if Edge will be as upset about Whataboutisms as he was during the last years.

Did you just pull a whataboutism, to attack someone else’s whataboutism... this post is way to meta for me...

Edit: ‘If you are going to complain about me constantly using whataboutism, then what about that time you used it?’... lol

[Dontrike]

I wonder if Edge will be as upset about Whataboutisms as he was during the last years.

I wonder if The Tick will come back on television. See, I can say random stuff too.

[Cthulhu 2020]

AH! An econ professor? Have you discovered the alchemy the defies supply and demand? You must have to have made such a bold statement! I sure hope this is more than "Ummmm I read a very persuasive Center for America Progress memo!"

As the business community designed. You still have this problem that your worldview depends on some magic alchemy where the law of supply and demand doesn't apply to labor, which is pretty bonkers. Or to Rent rates.

A) Supply and Demand doesn't apply to Housing or Wages..... somehow.

Alchemy economic principles according to you, when in reality adults who exist within a society will spend money. You seem to only believe in one side of your economic equation, which seems to be "More immigrants means higher demand for housing, as well as higher supply of labor, which means less wages!" It completely ignores all the other numerous factors involved here, which means you seem to be the mistaken one here.

It ignores that people who live and work in the country pay taxes as well as spend money, which creates a demand for goods and services. Even YOU know this, that ten adults living paycheck to paycheck will contribute more to market velocity than some rich fucker sitting on his wealth. The only difference is that the rich asshole buys more luxury goods, which themselves don't provide any kind of real market velocity. This isn't economic alchemy, it's just fact. You shouldn't call someone else's argument alchemy or voodoo if you're going to reduce your argument down to basics and ignore some of the most easily understood economic principles.

As far as housing, welcome to an issue that basically solely affects SoCal and New York, and New York isn't even because of migration. Most migrants these days tend to avoid SoCal for this very reason in fact. SoCal's housing issues might be affected by migration, but it's not the only or even majority factor in the issues with SoCal housing. A heavy concentration of high paying jobs is what basically makes housing unaffordable in SoCal cities. The fact that housing is a massive issue in major cities around the world is one of the prime things we can point to as the reason the housing issues aren't majorly created by the migration issue in the US.

Also, let us consider that migration from Mexico has massively decreased in the past few years, and yet the housing problem is worsening at a rate even faster than at any point in the last few decades. Why would less migration lead to even worse housing prices, if immigrants were the major reason for housing prices? The answer is simple, because they weren't the major reason for it.

Also, let's also consider that children are a drain on both the parents and the economy as the US is currently set up, more money is spent on children than is received from them. This is of course because the US views its children as an investment, hoping that they will be contributing members of society. But the US and businesses both sacrifice a lot to pay for the raising of children. This itself is not a bad thing, it should be encouraged, but if you get a healthy working adult right out of the gate, you skip that initial investment cost.

It really does seem that half of your anti migrant sentiments are based on false ideas of "negative" effects of migration. The other half seems to be emotional. I'm not going to sit here and say that migration has zero influence on these things, but overall we've found their effects to be minor. Arguing in absolutes is rather silly, and is what leads to silly declarations often made by conservatives, such as a glut of low skill laborers is what is destroying middle class wages. A glut of low skill labor may affect the overall unemployment rate of those making $7-10 an hour, but is ultimately not going to be the reason that mid tier wages have gone down over the last several decades.

Again, people seem to be wonderfully useful idiots for the propaganda spread by big corporations. Keeping migrants in citizenship limbo allows them to exploit them for cheap labor. It's why conservatives never actually do much in the way of making any kind of "final" move as far as mass deporting migrants. They get free/cheap labor by keeping them here. And of course every schmuck out there justifies their existence in this citizenship limbo for various reasons, but the most telling thing is that none of these people ever seem to concretely agree on why immigration is a bad thing. There are a plethora of reasons but there never seems to be any real consensus other than "It's illegal" which is incredibly vague for reasoning once you REALLY think hard about it - Imagine if you made their status in the US not illegal. Would people suddenly have issue with it? Or is it really that they're just hiding their underlying xenophobia with some paper thin reasoning?